Where Are You, Noona?
Whoosh— thud!
"Aagh!"
Teleporting in midair, Kaisent dropped a full meter onto his backside and screamed as a jolt of pain shot straight up his spine.
"Ow, ow, ow… Where… is this?"
Rubbing his aching rear, he looked around. The first things that met his eyes were a neatly packed dirt road and a wide expanse of green plain rolling out in every direction.
"Noona. Noona! Where are you? Noona!"
Kaisent called for Dang Seol-yeong, who had teleported ahead of him, turning in a full circle as he searched.
But all the boy could see were a scattering of trees, irregular hills rising and falling, and the orderly dirt road that cut through the flattest stretch of land. That was everything.
"Noona…?"
Unable to sense Dang Seol-yeong's presence at all, Kaisent felt his heart plummet as if it had dropped clean out of his chest.
Somehow, without knowing how, he simply knew.
She was not here.
"Noona. It's safe now. You can come out. Noona… Noona. Noona! Noonaaaaa! Noonaaaaaah!"
Kaisent howled her name like a raw scream, sobbing as he called for her.
But the ordeal that had found him was far from finished.
Slurrrp—
"Mingming…? What's wrong? Why… is your body… melting…?"
Mingming, who had blocked Kang Myeong-cheol's sword blade, had begun to dissolve like ice left out under a summer sun.
Ordinarily Mingming kept its core somewhere safe, but the shock from Kang Myeong-cheol's magic sword had carried all the way to where that core sat.
It was not a technique so much as an inherent property of the blade itself: anything the sword cut through had that impact spread through its entire structure, steadily eroding its durability.
Dang Seol-yeong, who had been slashed by that same edge, had struggled for a long time just to stop the bleeding.
The problem was that this ability was the absolute worst possible match for Mingming.
"N-no… No! Nonononono! Mingming! Here! Eat this! Stay with me! Mingming!"
Kaisent shoved every nutrition block he had at Mingming, but with its core already destroyed, Mingming refused to take them—as if it already understood that the end had come.
Plop. Plip-plip-plip—
In the end Mingming's form collapsed completely and slid from Kaisent's nape.
"Ah."
No matter the situation, Mingming had never once fallen from his neck.
And the fact that it had meant only one thing: Mingming's life was over.
"Ah… aah… aaaaaah…"
Kaisent gathered the melted, spreading remains of Mingming into both hands.
But Mingming would not hold together. No matter how he tried to press it back into shape, it only oozed apart again.
"Uh… ah… uwaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaah!"
The first woman he had ever given his heart to was gone, and the companion who had been with him his entire life was dead. Kaisent finally understood what it meant for a chest to tear open from the inside, and he screamed.
"Hwaaaawn~~"
A camp put together by a mercenary band numbering in the hundreds.
Of the two mercenaries on patrol around its perimeter, one cracked his mouth open in a massive yawn.
"Ugh. We worked our asses off yesterday—can't they give us even one day off?"
"Idiot. Who told you to go making bets for no reason? And then the guy who proposed the bet loses, of all people."
The yawning mercenary grumbled under his partner's needling.
Apparently something had happened the day before.
"Shit, who knew it'd be over in one shot the second we started. You lot didn't rig it, did you?"
"When would we have had the time? Pure luck. And yesterday your luck was just filthy."
"Hwaaaaawn~ I'm so tired I could d— huh?"
"Huh?"
Seasoned as they were, the two kept scanning their surroundings even while they bantered—and something entered their field of vision.
"Hey. That's a person, right?"
"Looks like it. Kinda short, though. A dwarf?"
"Build's too narrow for a dwarf. Halfling, maybe?"
"Could be. Might be an otherworlder."
Watching the distant figure trudge toward them, the two began trying to figure out what race it might be.
It was still too far to make out more than a rough shape.
"Doesn't that walk look a little unsteady?"
"Kinda does… wait. It fell."
The short figure heading their way collapsed, and concern flickered through them—maybe they ought to check.
Still, when it got back up and kept walking, it at least didn't seem badly hurt.
"Hey. That's… a kid?"
"A kid? You're right."
"What the hell? The next city is more than ten days from here, and a kid's walking it alone?"
The two of them started debating whether to report it inside or simply ignore it.
A good stretch of time passed before the child drew close enough that they could finally see its face.
"……"
The child they saw was Kaisent.
Worn out from screaming himself raw, he had followed the road in a half-resigned daze.
The moment the two mercenaries could make out his face, they drew in a sharp breath without meaning to.
Dried tear tracks.
Eyes emptied of hope.
Lids half-sunk under grief and despair.
Clothes of a cut they had never seen.
Traces of a rough tumble.
If despair itself had taken human form, it might have looked exactly like this. Kaisent's gaze was enough to make a person's heart twist just looking at it.
"Halt!"
One of the mercenaries barked the order out of pure habit.
"…Where… is this…?"
"Uh… this is a camp our mercenary band set up…"
"Kid, where are your parents? Anyone you know?"
"…No… Parents… and Noona too…"
The mercenaries scratched their heads as their own questions only made the atmosphere heavier.
Under normal circumstances they would have driven him off or steered him around the camp—but doing that to this boy felt like leaving him to die by the roadside.
Even mercenaries who lived rough lives felt a bitter taste at the thought of abandoning a child who looked this pitiful.
Clothes of a style I've never seen… Could he really be an otherworlder?
"You. Do you even know where you are?"
"…Where… is this…?"
"This is the territory of the Halrot Kingdom. You know the Halrot Kingdom?"
"…I don't…"
"Definitely an otherworlder."
"Yeah."
The two mercenaries took in Kaisent's clothes and the bare level of his basic knowledge and became certain he was an otherworlder.
Ordinarily, even with an orphan, they would have treated him with their usual roughness—but Kaisent's despair-soaked appearance stirred a conscience that normally stayed asleep.
Strangely, with this child alone, something like a protective instinct kept whispering that they had to help him somehow.
"Mm… I'll go report inside first."
"Yeah. Make it quick."
"Kid, wait here a bit."
Kaisent crouched where he stood as if nothing mattered anymore.
He buried his face in the knees he had drawn up with both arms and did not move at all. The two mercenaries sensed at once that he had taken some enormous blow.
The one who went inside returned with two others.
One wore metal armor reinforced with animal hide and a full metal helm that left only the eyes visible; the other was a calm-looking blond man.
"This is the otherworlder?"
"Y-yes."
"Kid. Lift your face."
The man in the metal helm spoke in a rough, suppressed voice and tapped Kaisent's thigh with his boot.
Fighting down the urge to keep his head bowed forever, Kaisent forced his face up with difficulty.
"Tsk. Those eyes are dead."
In the mercenary world, when a green recruit killed someone for the first time, took a serious wound for the first time, or lost a precious comrade and came away shattered, they called that look "dead eyes."
Most who wore that gaze never recovered from the shock. They either quit the work or slipped into panic and died for it.
From what he had heard, the boy had no parents and no one he knew.
Normally an orphan like this would have been thrown out on the spot—but for some reason, pity stirred in him.
Orphans turn light-fingered because they have no other way to eat. This one doesn't look like he's picked up those habits yet…
Conveniently, the last battle had left them short several hands.
If they only provided food and a place to sleep, they would not even have to pay wages—a free laborer. With that thought, the man opened his mouth to confirm.
"Anything you know how to do?"
"……. ……."
For a moment Kaisent's words stuck in his throat.
Not because he had no skills—because too many of them rose up at once and choked him.
The first things that surfaced were the magic he had learned after killing the old man, and the martial arts Dang Seol-yeong had taught him—but then—
Noona told me never to let other people know about my talents…
Dang Seol-yeong's warning came back to him, and he decided to list only the skills his parents had taught him, leaving combat out of it.
From the atmosphere, it seemed this man might take him in.
The man who had attacked them had destroyed everything except the nutrition blocks he had stuffed into his pockets. If he kept going like this, he would simply starve.
I don't know where she is—but for Noona's sake, I can't die like this…!
The desire to see Dang Seol-yeong again put a faint spark back into Kaisent's eyes. He spoke of skills other than martial arts and magic.
"I can handle machines… programming… biology… business management… public administration… a little medicine… and…"
"Hold on, hold on."
The helmed man cut him off at the stream of words coming out of Kaisent's mouth.
Programming was an unfamiliar term along the way, but the rest were all fields that at minimum only a noble household would teach.
"You're saying you know all of that?"
"My father made me learn all sorts of things…"
"…Keep going."
"Butchering… That's everything…"
The helmed man could not tell whether Kaisent's world was strange or Kaisent's father was.
If he were a noble, teaching scholarship would have been the end of it—yet he had been made to handle machines and even butcher meat?
The reason Kaisent had learned butchering was this:
—You are my children, so wherever you go you will be treated with high regard. But I have no intention of watching my bloodline turn into those insufferable nobles.—
Unable to stand the thought of his children becoming the kind of nobles he despised, their father had half-forced them to learn how to maintain machines and how to slaughter and dress meat with their own hands.
Machine maintenance could be excused as basic literacy for a spacefarer—but being made to butcher as well, on the grounds that one ought to know how the food one ate came to be, had been pure misery.
A face that has never known hardship, and fine skin. Looks like he was the heir of some high noble house. Still no idea why he learned butchering, though.
In any case, if the boy knew useful things like these, a few lessons would make him perfect to put to work.
But if this boy really was an otherworlder, there was one thing that absolutely had to be checked.
"Good. Next question. Do you know what democracy is?"
"Pardon?"
Even Kaisent, drowned in despair over losing Dang Seol-yeong and Mingming, put on a startled face at that.
What kind of out-of-nowhere question was this?
But the eyes behind the helm were serious, so he knew it was no joke.
"I… know of it…"
"Do you? Then did you come from a democratic society?"
"No…"
"Then what kind of political system did you live under?"
Reading the seriousness in the helmed man's gaze and realizing this was no game, Kaisent thought of the system led by his father and mothers as its rulers.
"An oligarchy… I suppose…"
Calling it a dictatorship would have been wrong—his father and mothers had respected one another and run things together—so an oligarchy, rule by a small number of leaders, came closest to the truth.
"Is that true?"
"It's true…"
The helmed man glared as if to say a lie would not be forgiven gently, but Kaisent, though frightened, did not twist his words.
"Sorry. Otherworlders who come from democratic systems tend to look at ours and call it barbaric, uncivilized—and in the worst cases they start revolutions and become a real pain."
Having apologized, he explained why they were so wary of democracy.
"Vice-captain. Go feed him something."
"Yes. Follow me."
The blond man who had come along jerked his chin at Kaisent and headed into the camp.
Countless tents, and rough-faced mercenaries in mismatched gear, turned their attention toward the noise.
Feeling like an animal in a zoo, Kaisent could not bear the pressure and had to keep his head down.
"The captain says to give this one something to eat. From now on he'll be working under our band."
"A brat this young?"
"We're short on hands for the grunt work, aren't we?"
The attendant shoved Kaisent toward a stout man who had various dishes hanging and something simmering over a fire.
The stout man, who happened to be boiling soup for the evening meal, poured a chunky broth into a wooden bowl and handed over a rough hunk of bread.
"Mealtime's almost here, so go eat in that corner and stay out of the way."
A bleak tone with not a shred of consideration for a child.
It was, in its own way, an effort—but to Kaisent it only felt curt.
Taking the soup bowl and the scrap of bread, Kaisent went to the corner and scooped up a spoonful of soup with the wooden spoon that came with the bowl.
Slurp—
"Tastes bad…"
After one spoonful, Kaisent murmured it quietly to himself.
It was a stew thrown together without much care—and yet, objectively speaking, this soup was far better than the bitter wild mushrooms and faintly sweet wild fruit he had roasted in the forest.
But to Kaisent, the rough meals he had shared with Dang Seol-yeong had tasted far better.
"Hic… hhik… hnnngh…"
They had only been together a few days, and already she had become someone irreplaceable. Feeling the empty places left by Dang Seol-yeong and by Mingming, who had been with him his whole life, Kaisent let his tears fall into the soup.
"I'll… get revenge… That one… I will never forgive…!"
Next he burned with hatred for the nameless Eastern man who had attacked them for some absurd reason and torn him away from the people he cherished.
For a boy who had lived a life far removed from violence until now, it was the first true murderous intent he had ever known.